All-Clad has promised an appliance that can do it all: chop, cook, knead, whip, and more. But is it worth the high price tag?

At first glance, you'd think the new All-Clad Prep & Cook is a mere food processor. But it’s more like a bulky, tabletop robot that you’ve made an bargain with: you’ll give over a sizable chunk of counterspace, and in return it will do all of your cooking for you.

As described on its website, the All-Clad Prep & Cook “cooks, slow cooks, steams, stir fries, mixes, stirs, kneads, whips, crushes ice, chops nuts, and more all in the touch of a button.” My dear, is there anything you can’t do? The thing, is this appliance should be able to do everything for what it costs: a cool thousand dollars.

The Epi Test Kitchen tried the renaissance appliance out to see if it was really worth it.

The General Scoop

Generally speaking, the All-Clad Prep & Cook is a food processor that cooks. You pop in a coarsely chopped onion and it dices it for you—then browns it. There are settings for a variety of functions: steaming and chopping, making soup, blending pastry, and sautéing. You can mix bread dough in the machine, and set it to rise. The machine comes with a steamer basket, a kneading and crushing blade, a whisk, a mixer, and a frightening-sounding tool called an "ultrablade knife." All of these attachments can be inserted to change the All-Clad's function. It also comes with a book that includes 300 All-Clad specific recipes. They run the gamut from deviled eggs and choux pastry to leek pie and chicken tagine. In sum, the Prep & Cook talks a good game. But can it deliver?

The Pros

1. It's Easy to Use

The All-Clad is wildly easy to use. In getting started, I simply plugged it in and started cooking—no real need to set anything up or reference a manual if that's not your thing. When you cook with it, you toss in ingredients, hit a few buttons to set the various functions, occasionally switch out the attachments, and that's pretty much it. For things like pizza, of course, the machine makes the dough for you, but you must still take on the task of rolling out the dough and baking. And when I made risotto, aside from a couple moments when I added ingredients and pressed a button, I literally sat on my couch as a whirring, gurgling, space-age machine made my dinner for me. For weeknight cooking, this of course has a certain appeal.

2. It's Good at Sauces and Emulsifications

The All-Clad was also adept at making sometimes tricky emulsified sauces, like hollandaise. It feels impressive and precise—like you're really living in the Jetson's universe. Another advantage? The Prep & Cook isn't afraid of overcooking a delicate sauce or over-whipping mayonnaise the way you are, human.

The Cons

1. It's Huge—and Expensive

There's no way around it—the Prep & Cook is bulky, heavy, and expensive. But you can rationalize away those flaws if you focus on the sheer variety of functions that the All-Clad can perform. Theoretically, instead of buying a food processor, a stand mixer, and a slow cooker, you can buy this all-in-one appliance that will take care of it all. In that light, the machine is actually pretty cost effective, and the space it takes up is meager.

2. You Have to Use Proprietary Recipes

When you use the All-Clad, you can't just toss in the ingredients from Grandma's favorite minestrone. The instructions specify that cooks should only use the recipe book that comes with the appliance, or the settings, temperatures, and cooking times designed for the machine may not work. This takes some joy out of cooking. Really, I can't make my favorite French onion soup? I have to make their less-delicious version? (Maybe I'm biased—if you have an All-Clad you'll be visiting Epicurious a lot less frequently, after all.)

3. The Cooking Times Can Be Incorrect

Even when you use the exact recipes that are included with the Prep & Cook, the cooking times were often frustratingly incorrect. For example, the time for the steamed potatoes was wrong—they were still a little hard when they came out. And, the risotto recipe had some inconsistently cooked pieces of rice, and was still a little too soupy and al dente when it came out of the machine. No surprise there—cooking is an inexact science, requiring tasting and adjustment to get perfect results. The Prep & Cook isn't capable of that in 2017.

4. Mixing and chopping can be inconsistent

When our test kitchen assistant made pizza dough in the Prep & Cook, she found that the dough wasn't fully combined (though when the dough was rolled out and baked, it came out fine). And when we tried to grate cheese in the machine, the chopping mechanism also created chunky, unevenly sized bits.

5. It's Difficult to Clean

The blades of its component parts are extra sharp—it's easy to cut yourself on them—and the chunky plastic layers of its lid trap liquids and are difficult to clean. (That said, since the machine chops and cooks, and blends, all in the same machine, it does cut down on the actual number of dishes you have to do in a lot of cases.)

The Overall Verdict

At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, new technology that increases ease and reduces effort will always take some of the joy and pleasure out of doing the thing yourself. For people who really love to cook—who scour the internet for recipes, and invent their own, and get genuine pleasure out of standing over the stove and watching the small miracle of chopping and browning and stirring turn into delicious dinner—the All-Clad takes away the creativity and the fun. For people who just want to get dinner on the table, the All-Clad can produce a more-than-adequate meal, but doesn't perform reliably enough to be a no-brainer. We'll pass.